Isaac Newton

If there was any one person who could be considered the hero of the enlightenment, such an honor would undoubtedly go to Sir Isaac Newton. In conversation with a co-worker of mine, he told me that philosophy was a bunch of garbage which eventually and thankfully was replaced by science with the coming of Isaac Newton. I told my co-worker that he was wrong, oh so very wrong, for it was Newton himself who said “If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Those giants were philosophers. As should be apparent by now, had there been no Bacon, Kepler, Galileo or Descartes there simply would have been no Newton, at least the Newton that we know. Nevertheless, as we will see, the genius of Newton and his discoveries are difficult indeed to exaggerate.

Vengeance and Justice

This post will deal with ideas which seem so obvious to me that I’m sure they must have been thought up by somebody before me, though I have not read them in any other source. I will argue that there is a fundamental similarity which underlies both vengeance and justice, and that the only differences which exist between these two principles lie primarily in the way in which this common underlying principle is implemented in reality.

Blaise Pascal

If there was a thinker who was the polar opposite of Spinoza it would have to have been Blaise Pascal (1632-1662). Although a mathematical genius in his younger years, having done much work in geometry, probability and even designing what is sometimes recognized as the first binary calculating device, he eventually came to give up such endeavors in favor of religious pursuits. In this post we will deal with Pascal’s skepticism and how he interpreted this as making religious belief more rather than less a necessity. We will also consider what is now known as “Pascal’s wager.”